Pentagon: Guantanamo tab $5.2 billion and counting

Bushes overgrow what remains of Camp X-Ray on July 26, 2013. In 2002, the camp was established as a temporary detention center on Guantanamo Bay. Cassandra Monroe/DVIDS New number-crunching by Democrats campaigning for Guantanamo’s closure says the Pentagon spends nearly a half-billion dollars a year — a whopping $2.7 million per prisoner — to operate its offshore prison complex in southeast Cuba. The figure is by far the largest per-prisoner cost ever calculated and apparently, for the first time, includes troop costs. The ostensibly temporary Pentagon prison has, since it opened in 2002, been staffed largely by troops trained up on their way to Guantanamo for rotations of nine months to a year. The cost for this year — $454.1 million to operate, staff and build at the prison complex — comes from a report by the Defense Department’s Office of the Comptroller. It was first...